Acer unveiled a pair of AMD Ryzen 8040 series laptops on Tuesday. Unsurprisingly, given their chips' dedicated neural processing units (NPU), the company is marketing the 2024 Acer Swift Edge 16 and Swift Go 14 as AI workhorses. The Windows 11 machines support OLED displays, Radeon 780M graphics and 32GB of RAM. The Ryzen 8040 chip series, revealed in December, has a dedicated AI Engine that AMD claims makes it up to 1.4 times faster than its predecessors in Llama 2 and AI vision model performance. Acer says the Swift Edge 16 and Swift Go 14 will deploy the NPU for AI-related tasks like PurifiedVoice (remove background noise in calls and recordings) and PurifiedView (blurring backgrounds in images and correcting your eyes' positioning on video calls).

Acer is refreshing its Swift Edge 16 and Swift Go 14 laptops, showcasing one of the first instances of AMD's latest Ryzen 8000 mobile family of processors as well as a new AI app which Acer is preloading on the PCs. Acer will shift its updated Swift Edge 16 beginning in March, for 1,299 and up. Acer's Swift Go 14 with the latest Ryzen chips inside will cost 699 and up, and will ship in April. Acer's Swift Edge 16 shipped last year with the older Ryzen 7840U inside. PCWorld's Swift Edge 16 (2023) review assigned it four out of five stars, praising its inky black display, strong performance, and light weight, but frowning at its plasticky construction and keyboard.

Computex is the most vital PC show of the year, every year. Just look at the name! Taiwan's trade show is where computer vendors large and small unveil their latest, greatest gear ahead of the crucial back to school and holiday shopping seasons. If CES is where the industry showcases its vision for the future, Computex keeps it real. Product cycles for the world's biggest chip vendors made this Computex feel somewhat muted.

We really liked the original Acer Swift Edge 16, and Acer's update to it is surprisingly intriguing: It's even thinner, though heavier, with a step down in both the display quality and price. In our original review of the Acer Swift Edge 16 we noted that "we've not seen a laptop with a larger screen that weighs less." But reviewer Matt Elliott went on to note that he wouldn't mind seeing Acer invest in a bit more material to stabilize the laptop. Acer apparently rejected that advice, went the other direction, and this $1,299 Ryzen 7000-based laptop is the result. As a consequence, the Acer Swift Edge 16 (SFE16-43-R98R) will be a tad thinner at 0.51 inches thick, but will weigh 2.73 pounds, a 0.14-pound increase over the previous generation.